Life is better in HD

Thursday

May 8, 2014 at 11:50 PMMay 8, 2014 at 11:50 PM

I like to jokingly tell my friends that the Foster's Daily Democrat newsroom has four flat-screen TVs on the wall -- one tuned to CNN, one to Fox News, another to C-SPAN and one to Al-Jazeera.Nobody believes me.The joke is not that Foster's is an unsophisticated news organization, but rather too small and too locally focused to be monitoring national and international news networks around the clock. In fact, for most of the first 10 years I worked here, the only TV in the Foster's newsroom was laughably modest (see photo above).Yes, that's a 20-inch, low-def TV with a built in VCR. Pretty snazzy, no? It was good for tuning in to the WMUR news at 6 and 11 each night. If there was a event we at the sports desk wanted to follow (for work purposes only, of course), we'd have to walk across the room and park ourselves there, for the TV was on the exact opposite side of the floor from sports desk. And the event had to be on NESN or broadcast television, because we didn't get ESPN.If there was a Celtics or Bruins game we wanted to keep track of for deadline purposes, it was basically easier just to follow the game on the internet.That all changed last week when Foster's finally scrapped the old TV and the dozen years of dust that had accumulated on top of it, and replaced it with a 44-inch high-def flat screen. We also got regular old cable with ESPN and a number of sports stations. Now, not only can we see every blemish and mole on the WMUR anchors' faces, we can see the same on Zdeno Chara's face, too. I'm not exactly sure how this will make us better sports reporters; in fact it might mean we get less work done. But at least we'll know the score of the Red Sox and Bruins games at the same time as everyone else. And if we get bored with sports, we can always turn to Al-Jazeera. Please send comments to jdoyle@fosters.com. Also, I invite you to follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/JohnDoyle603.